Earlier this week Alex Chalmers, the chair of Oxford Labour students, resigned. He was honest and succinct about the reason why. “A large proportion of both OULC and the student left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews”, he said.

Last night, a statement from the Oxford University Jewish Society began to circulate on social media, claiming to give an insight into how this problem with Jews was actually manifesting itself.

According to the statement, senior members of the Labour club liked to regale listeners with a song called “Rockets over Tel Aviv” and endorse Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians. They were in the habit of casually referring to Jewish students as “Zio”. They repeated tropes about the “Zionist lobby” and “high net worth Jewish individuals”. They stated all Jews should be required to denounce Zionism and the state of Israel, and that those who refused to do so should be shunned. And they had arranged for a group of students to harass a Jewish student and shout “filthy Zionist” at her.

For obvious reasons, relations between the Oxford University Jewish Society and Oxford University Labour Club are at something of a low ebb. And it will take time to verify the validity of each of these claims. But they align with Alex Chalmers' own statement that members of the Labour club executive “used offensive terms with casual abandon”, and, “had a history of targeting and harassing Jewish students”.

Now there are calls for the University authorities and the Labour party to intervene. Such intervention is inadequate. The police need to be called in and if it is true students have been harassed in the way described, people need be arrested and they need to be prosecuted. Then the senior administrators of Oxford University, who have now clearly lost control of their establishment, need to be sacked. At which point attention needs to turn to the Labour Party.

A Labour rosette Photo: PA

It would be nice to be able to write that these reports are shocking. That they are an aberration. That they are anathema to a political party that has a long and proud tradition of combating prejudice.

But I can’t write that because these reports are not shocking. They should be, but they are wholly predictable. Nor are they an aberration. They are reflective of a perpetuation – and tolerance of – anti-Semitism that starts at the top of the Labour Party, then steadily works its way down. And are they no longer anathema to Labour or its heritage. Far from it. Anti-Semitism is now firmly embedded in the Labour party’s DNA.

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece talking about the hypocrisy of the reaction to the historic racism of Oliver Letwin. About how when it came to bigotry, the Labour Party and the wider Left consistently fail to practice what they preach. But as the events at Oxford University Labour club – the largest and most prestigious university Labour club in the country – reveal, it’s no longer just a question of Labour not practising what it preaches. Labour is now openly prasticing what it preaches against.

It’s time for Labour MPs, Labour activists and Labour members face up to a few hard truths. One of which is this. Labour does not have an anti-Semitism problem, Labour has a racism problem.

I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone. My articles are littered with references to “racism and anti-Semitism”, as if they are not one and the same thing. Racism – that’s bad. Anti-Semitism – yeah, it’s bad, but it’s a different sort of bad. Not quite as bad.

It is as bad. Gathering a gang to go up to a Jewish student and call her a filthy Zionist is the same – exactly the same – as gathering a gang and going up to black student and calling them a filthy n–––––.

Another thing the Labour Party needs to understand is that Labour’s racism is now hiding behind a cloak of “anti-Zionism”. The statement “I’m not a racist, I’m an anti-Zionist” has become the Left’s “I’m not a racist but…”, or the Left’s equivalent of “I can’t be called a racist for saying I hate Muslims. Islam is a religion, not a race”.

I’m sure that there are people who have spent a lifetime campaigning against what they would call “Zionism” who are not racist. In the same why I’m sure there are people who have spent a lifetime campaigning against immigration who are not racist. That’s not the point. They are now being used as human shields by a lot of people who are racist. And that shield has to be stripped away.

The Oxford University Labour Club has more in common with Mosley's Blackshirts than my father's Labour Party.

Labour also has to realise this is not an accidental but an institutional and systemic failing. It is not “a few bad apples”. Whether it’s the leader’s easy tolerance of racism from his own personal acquaintances. Or the collective endorsement of racist policies such as the boycotting of Jewish speakers or goods. Or the casual racism expressed and tolerated at demonstrations or campaign meetings. Or the racist harassment of Jews on university campuses. Labour is a racist party now.

The final thing Labour has to understand is this. This is not another “Jeremy Corbyn” problem. Yes, his own tolerance of racism has exacerbated it. But everyone in the Labour Party has tolerated it. Ask anyone about the racism embedded in the Labour Party and they will shrug. “Yeah, anti-Semitism is a problem. But what can we do?”

That’s what Labour does now. It just shrugs. If shrugs won votes, Labour would win every election with a 200 seat majority.

It needs to stop shrugging. An NEC investigation into what’s been going on at Oxford won’t cut it. If Labour is going to finally confront it’s own racism, there are several things it needs to do.

First, Jeremy Corbyn needs to put out at a statement apologising for his past relationships with holocaust denier Paul Eisen and convicted racist Raed Salah. Second, Labour needs to back the government’s ban on a public sector boycott of Israeli goods. And finally, Labour needs to expel any member who self-identifies as an “Anti-Zionist”, just as they would any member who decided to self identify as an “Anti-Arab” or “Anti-Black” or “Anti-Muslim” or “Anti-Migrant”.

Obviously these moves alone would not rid Labour of its racism. They would essentially be political statements. But statements matter. And they would send a clear signal that bigotry – in all its forms – will not be tolerated.

Of course the Labour leadership won’t even contemplate any of these things. Which means every Labour MP and Labour activist and Labour member has to answer this question: you are a member of a racist party now. So what are you going to do about it?